A word from the editor...

Quartz called 2013 "a lost year for tech," but that's certainly not how it seemed to us here on the reviews deck of the Orbiting HQ. This year saw us jumping from product to product like frogs on a griddle, as my grandmother would say—we had a hell of a year, and we got a chance to put our hands on some downright awesome products.

Putting together a list like this of the "best" gadgets of 2013 poses a lot of problems, though; not the least of which is figuring out exactly what "best" means. Fanciest? Most functional? Coolest? Most expensive? Flashiest? Most useful? Rather than try to define "best" and force everyone to come up with an ordered list, I instead asked the team to talk about the gadgets they liked the most—the gadgets they'd most want to live with as their very own. Or at least the ones they had the most fun reviewing!

Here, then, are the Gear & Gadgets top picks for gadgets in 2013 by reviewer—although Andrew had so much to say that he asked to go twice. That boy's a regular reviewing machine.

—Lee Hutchinson

Outlier technical pants—Casey Johnston

Further Reading

Pants from a startup called Outlier mean I'm (maybe) never going back to denim.

I moved on this year from a regular gadgets review beat, which allowed me to expand to some more offbeat and interesting stuff. By far my favorite review, and incidentally also my favorite thing I reviewed, was my Outlier ladies' daily riding pants. I've now owned my oldest pair for almost exactly a year, and they remain as comfortable, waterproof, and sturdy as the day I got them. Unlike a lot of other clothes with more quality compromises, I don't have to really think about when it's appropriate to wear them—whether I'm going to be standing or sitting a lot, if they fit over long johns, if they'll be too hot or too cold, if I'm underdressing or overdressing. It helps that they're the New York standard of black.

Enlarge/ A close-up of the doubleweave twill used in the Ladies' daily riding pants. The Nano Sphere treatment helps keep water, coffee, ketchup, and their ilk from soaking in.

Those are their merits as just pants, but they also continue to fit their intended purposes as streetwear-style cycling garment. Per Outlier's promise, the fabric hasn't blown out or worn down in the spots that jeans normally would from the repetitive motion of cycling. When I ride, they don't pinch or strain in spots that jeans normally do.

For the review, I got to make a video of dousing these pants versus jeans in water to show how fast they dry. The jeans in particular felt clammy and awful. The things I do for Ars readers.

Casey endures damp jeans for your amusement.

The price remains exorbitantly high ($225), but I have two pairs of DRPs and wear them about 95 percent of the time my outfit calls for pants, not to mention several times between washes. The DRPs are only one item in Outlier's line of cycling/athletic-oriented streetwear, but they remain my favorite.

Android KitKat—Ron Amadeo

My favorite thing to review in 2013 was Android 4.4 KitKat, because I am a sucker for new versions of Android. Hardware is becoming more and more of a commodity—just about everything has the same SoC (Snapdragon 800), the same amount of RAM (2GB), and the same screen resolution (1080p). Software has the biggest effect on the user experience, yet for many companies, it seems to be an afterthought or a vehicle for marketing bullet points.

KitKat is a beautifully designed, cohesive OS that brought a ton of improvement to the Android ecosystem. It will affect all future Android devices, and it made Android friendlier to slower devices like wearable computers while bringing about crazy new innovations like a Google Search-powered dialer and (on the Nexus 5 at least) a Google Search-powered home screen. I find the integration of Google's online services into their mobile OS fascinating, and KitKat was another step in that direction.

The merging of OS and cloud computing is something that's never really been done before, and it's taking computing in interesting new directions. While other companies seem to be copying Google's cloud integration strategy in order to push users to their respective services, Google was the company that started the trend, and they're the only company that's doing a good job of it. While my laptop and desktop computer are much more powerful than my phone, my phone is easily the smartest, most helpful computing device I own.

Further Reading

Tons of user- and system-level changes make KitKat one of the biggest releases ever.

That intelligence and usefulness is all because of the software, namely KitKat and Google Now. My phone knows where I am, what I need to do today, who my friends are, and what e-mails are coming in. It makes great use of that information. It doesn't matter how many gigahertz you have if all you do is draw a Web browser with it. That's where all the innovation happens and where all the exciting new uses will come from. Software is king, and the best software released this year (in my opinion, anyway) is KitKat.

Well, it was a bit underwhelming year for tech, a year of evolutionary revisions but nothing extraordinary. My PCs went through one more year without getting any new parts, because there isn't anything worth upgrading too. Looks like my iPad 3 and iPhone 5 will serve me another generation if not more as well. At least, there was nothing to spend money on I'm looking forward to the 8-core Haswell E with DDR4 and Nvidia Gsync. 2014 may be the year I will finally upgrade my PC!

The pants and Ultra Ever Dry reviews were great but the others? You have an Android rev, a new iPad (now with more small!) and yet another generic Android phone review. I get that you guys love Android for whatever reason, and I understand the theme of this list, but surely there are things in the 2013 tech world that a true geek would find more interesting and cool.

Or, alternatively, we can find whatever we want to be interesting and cool for whatever reasons we want.

The thing I WANTED to like the most this year was the RetroN 5, which is an Android game console with slots for five different classic consoles. The thing turned out to be very very late at best, vaporware at worst. There's always 2014.

Andrew - did you make a distinction between the two mobile operating systems for this article? Is the Moto X your favorite Android gadget this year, or your favorite gadget overall - over and above the iPhone you purchased for your personal use?

We are at an interesting point in the technology curve. CPUs aren't going to get much faster but are going to use less power at the next node (any we might only have one node left as the cost to get to 9-10 nm might make it economically undesirable). GPUs will improve but power and heat are going to be limiting factors. Display technology is providing 4K when most people cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at their viewing/display size intersection. Music reproduction has stagnated because most people cannot appreciate the difference between good speakers and mediocre speakers (and their listening patterns make the difference irrelevant). Battery capacity is holding many potential advancements in check and there is not obvious solution that is proven out. I suspect security and better memory architecture (the ability to have your RAM and HDD become one) will allow for some interesting changes but even that is only going to provide gains for certain applications. So, it seems like we will be seeing gradual improvements in things that interface with a consumer (although I am quite sure there will be significant improvements in a number of behind the scenes areas the overall impact is less likely to be significant to a consumer)

The above, to me at least, suggests that many conventional tech companies are going to struggle for the next 3-5 years. Companies like Samsung and Apple will be slightly better off because the life cycle of many mobile devices is only 2 years but it isn't clear how sustainable that is long term. So I expect to see a very interesting 5-10 years of consolidation (while the growth of emerging economies helps ease the transition).

Andrew - did you make a distinction between the two mobile operating systems for this article? Is the Moto X your favorite Android gadget this year, or your favorite gadget overall - over and above the iPhone you purchased for your personal use?

To be clear, this isn't a "best" list, but a "most interesting" list. I like the iPhone 5S fine, but I thought "the first Motorola phone in ages that I haven't completely hated" was cooler than "another pretty good iPhone." At this point I'm pretty comfortable hopping back and forth between iOS and Android (and sometimes Windows Phone), though, and that might not be the case for everyone here.

Great article, though I do have to say that I enjoyed the "sexist" Albert Einstein obituary. Maybe the first and second paragraphs should have been switched (in both his and Brill's writeup), but I always love reading about people with monumental achievements who still make time for their families (Especially if you get to throw in the phrase "step-daughter and first cousin once removed")

I won’t wear it out to dinner, because it seems as rude as holding a phone in my hand during a meal. I won’t wear it to a bar. I won’t wear it to a movie. I can’t wear it to the playground or my kid’s school because sometimes it scares children.

It is pretty great when you are on the road — as long as you are not around other people, or do not care when they think you’re a knob.

When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an *hole. My co-workers at WIRED, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.

Do you know what it takes to get a professional nerd to call you a nerd? I do. (Hint: It’s Glass.)

I won’t wear it out to dinner, because it seems as rude as holding a phone in my hand during a meal. I won’t wear it to a bar. I won’t wear it to a movie. I can’t wear it to the playground or my kid’s school because sometimes it scares children.

It is pretty great when you are on the road — as long as you are not around other people, or do not care when they think you’re a knob.

When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an *hole. My co-workers at WIRED, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.

Do you know what it takes to get a professional nerd to call you a nerd? I do. (Hint: It’s Glass.)

I'm still confused why people are portraying Google Glass as something you constantly wear.. It's a hands free camcorder with the added bonus of being helpful for tours, events, diy projects, travel, hangouts (video calls - especially with the grandparents) and maybe games or exercise.. Certain industries could be helped too - cops, hospitals, tour guides, repairmen, aviators, probably more..

If you are wearing them constantly, you are just a more modern version of the ahole with his bluetooth ear piece always in..

On Topic: I completely agree with Andrew's Moto X assessment - I saw the specs and said meh, but now having owned it for a month it's great, especially the active notifications.. I wouldn't swap it for any other smartphone on the market

The pants and Ultra Ever Dry reviews were great but the others? You have an Android rev, a new iPad (now with more small!) and yet another generic Android phone review. I get that you guys love Android for whatever reason, and I understand the theme of this list, but surely there are things in the 2013 tech world that a true geek would find more interesting and cool.

Isn't the definition of a geek "someone who gets excited about things other people don't get excited about"? For my part, I know that my favorite from 2009 (have I really been reading Ars that long?!) would have been OS X Snow Leopard; which I'm sure most of the Internet would have agreed on.

I'd love to see more comments with readers' favorites from 2014 instead of disagreements with the authors' personal taste and preferences. My fave this year: the Xbox 360 controller, because this was the year I bought a console. After having it for six months, I'm still amazed every time that controller rumbles.

You have an Android rev, a new iPad (now with more small!) and yet another generic Android phone review. I get that you guys love Android for whatever reason, and I understand the theme of this list, but surely there are things in the 2013 tech world that a true geek would find more interesting and cool.

The nature of progress is to move incrementally. The great leaps are exceedingly few and far between. One needs to pay attention, to learn to appreciate fine details, in order to appreciate progress as it churns.

Quote:

Sports, movies, cars, wristwatches, cameras, food — writers who cover these fields tend to celebrate, to relish, the best their fields have to offer. Technology, on the other hand, seems to attract enthusiasts with no actual enthusiasm.

I won’t wear it out to dinner, because it seems as rude as holding a phone in my hand during a meal. I won’t wear it to a bar. I won’t wear it to a movie. I can’t wear it to the playground or my kid’s school because sometimes it scares children.

It is pretty great when you are on the road — as long as you are not around other people, or do not care when they think you’re a knob.

When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an *hole. My co-workers at WIRED, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.

Do you know what it takes to get a professional nerd to call you a nerd? I do. (Hint: It’s Glass.)

The first comment I got, was someone walked past me and said "borg". Made my day.

The tests culminated with me coating a Slip-n-Slide with Ultra-Ever Dry and then flinging myself down it... which, predictably, resulted in me hurting myself. However, it was a hell of a lot of fun, and watching water skitter around on treated surfaces—glass, fabric, or whatever!—was just hella neat. I can't deny that it was an incredibly awesome way to spend the afternoon.

I agree that Outlier's pants are amazing. I picked up a pair of the Keirin cut this year. Best. Fit. Ever. As some one who cycles and lifts, its great to have a pant that properly fits my thighs with out increasing the waist size. The water proofing/resistances is great too. Still waiting to see how long they last, but I'm optimistic.